The Inquisitr » iran

Twitter’s power to change the news and the world – more hype than substance

Steven Hodson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:28:17 +0000

Can you just imagine the phone call at Twitter WHQ when they were asked by the US State Department to hold off on a planned maintenance so that the voice in Iran could be heard around the world following the country’s national election.

Man the ego boost that must have sent through the office. You see Twitter isn’t just some hack-kneed 140 character messaging service for people with no life. No indeedy folks Twitter was at the forefront of being the worldwide voice for those trying to peaceably overthrow a corrupt government.

They held the pulse of the world’s news about what was happening within their hands. Twitter was a world shaker and mover. Yup it was full of all kinds of awesome sauce.

Or was it it?

In an interesting report that was made available to Ryan Tate at Valleywag by one of the author’s of the report shines a bit of a different light on just how much of an effect Twitter really had.

Charles Leadbeater, a British writer and analyst, along with research Annika Wong decided to go a little deeper than all the hype and back slapping that the Twitterati smothered themselves in. The report called Cloud Culture is to be published by the British Council next year but in the meantime some interesting facts have been put out there that take some of the shine off of Twitter’s halo.

It shows that such a tiny proportion of Iranians are on Twitter that any stories about a new movement based on the social network are meaningless. The figure they provide, by they way, includes the thousands of foreigners who changed their Twitter location to Tehran when the ‘Iranian internet revolution’ story struck after the elections in June and Facebook and Twitter were afire with Iran sentiment. So the likely figure is even lower.

The report adds that only one third of Iranians have internet access at all. And because opposition supporters are young, and on the internet, and Ahmadinejad supporters tend to be older and rural, the picture on the ground is likely skewed by any analysis that relies on tweets.

So the reality is that if there was any real hype surrounding the news coming out of Iran it had less to do with the people actually in the country than it did with the web digerati clamping on to a fleeting meme that is the end didn’t change a damn thing except for possibly getting a whole bunch of people in jail – or worse .. dead.

It’s a warm feeling when you believe that you are a part of something bigger than yourself. Something that might change even a little piece of the world and Twitter in all its simplicity does just that. That however doesn’t mean that any real long lasting change will come out of some sort of failed electronic version of the Ride of Paul Reeve.

The actual sphere of influence of things like Twitter regardless of how much the social media mavens is minuscule in comparison to the rest of the news gathering world and activist movements. If Twitter really did have the power to change the world why aren’t we hearing from Pakistan, why aren’t we seeing a flood of change coming from the Middle East. Why aren’t we hearing from within our own country about the injustices and Twitter being used to change those injustices.

Sure we might hear the late breaking story but just as in the old game we use to play as boy scouts around the campfire. What you whisper in the first person’s ear never turns out to be the same things that you hear whispered back t o you after the story makes the circle of the campfire.

That original news flash that occurs in the first second on Twitter will almost never be the same story we all hear as it gets retweeted to hell. Anything beyond even the first couple of messages fired over Twitter do nothing to add veracity or accurate new information. And as the recent events at Fort Hood have shown we may even need to serious question those first messages themselves.

Citizen journalism in the spirit of the reporter on the front lines might be a nice ideal but whether or not it stands up under the real scrutiny of examination after the fact still remains to be seen.

Over 700 Injured In Iran Quake

Duncan Riley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:42:57 +0000

A 4.9-scale earthquake that struck the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas early Wednesday local time has injured injuring at least 700, according to Iran State Media.

The quake struck at 2:56 am Iran Time and was also felt in the nearby Qeshm highland.

Reports from the scene are reliant on Iran media and are sketchy. It’s believe that the injuries may have been caused by building collapses, but at the same time such damage may have resulted in fatalities.

More when we have it.

Ahmadinejad’s Administration Accused Of Stealing Billions

AHN — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:00:01 +0000

A report by Iran’s State Audit organization found a series of inconsistencies in the amount of revenue recorded by different organs of President Ahmadinejad’s government. The discrepancies, totaling around $66 billion, are equivalent to Iran’s average oil revenues over an entire year.

Ahmadinejad’s regime has been accused of misappropriating oil revenues for years. While the gist of the State Audit organization’s findings were made public months ago, the extent of the inconsistencies it uncovered were first revealed Monday by Farda, a conservative local media outlet associated with Tehran’s mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, frequently cited as a potential future contender for president.

“The amount was really surprising,” Hossein Bastani, the co-founder of Rooz, an Iranian dissident journal, told The Media Line. “In the past the Iranian parliament questioned what had happened to $1 billion in the 2006 budget. Until this week, that was the largest amount of money to have disappeared. Now we are talking about $66 billion!”

“We do not think that this money is stolen, not at all,” Bastani clarified. “What is important is that the government is using such huge amounts of money in a non-transparent way. Whether it is to assure the re-election of Ahmadinejad or other secret military or intelligence projects doesn’t really matter. Every dollar made from oil exports should be sent to the Central Bank.”

The largest of the discrepancies centers around $35 billion worth of imported goods. While Iran’s Central Bank reported almost $220 billion worth of goods to have been purchased for import into the country between 2005 and 2008, the country’s customs administration reports only $185 billion worth of goods to have actually arrived in the country.

The report also found significant inconsistencies between the revenue the government reported as earned through exports of oil and other goods and the amount of money actually deposited in the country’s central bank.

While Iran’s oil ministry recorded $255 billion in revenue generated from the country’s oil sales over the past four years, Iran’s Central Bank reported receiving a much larger sum of money, $280 billion, during the aforementioned period.

A further $2.6 billion discrepancy in revenues from non-oil exports was reported and the Central Bank found a $3 billion discrepancy between the amount of money recorded as being in the country’s foreign exchange reserves and the amount of money actually there.

Oil constitutes Iran’s largest source of revenue, making up 80% of the country’s foreign exchange revenues. Heavily dependent on oil, Iran’s economy has been badly damaged by the recent fall in oil prices.

Ahmadinejad’s regime has been accused of misappropriating oil revenues for years, but some Iranian analysts said the recent issue had been overblown by local media, attributing the dispute to an internal government spat over accounting practices.

“The two organizations at loggerheads over this are the Ministry of Oil and the State Audit organization,” Dr Seyyed Mohammad Marandi, a lecturer at the University of Tehran, told The Media Line. “Neither side is accusing the other of fraud and while there are some newspapers who have talked about missing money, that’s not what the agencies themselves have said… They just have different ways of carrying out their auditing and I think they are trying to resolve their differences.”

Dr Marandi said it was unlikely Iranian officials would be able to steal billions.

“You can’t manipulate statistics without it being discovered and auditing is not something a major government agency would fool around with,” he said. “If you try to make a buck by getting out of a taxi and asking the driver to write you a receipt for $20 when you only paid $15, in any country that form of fraud or theft would be the most easy to discover. So usually if there’s corruption, it’s would be found at the middleman level in kickbacks or bribes for oil tenders.”

Other analysts argued that while the accounting inconsistencies may not point to corruption, they were likely the result of funds appropriated for illicit government initiatives.

“Economic mismanagement is a huge issue and one of the most unreported causes of discontent in the country,” Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, an Iran expert and the executive director of the Transatlantic Institute, told The Media Line. “There is liberal use of state revenue to fund activities that are not necessarily audited, such as nuclear procurement, terrorism and funding insurgencies abroad. These things don’t appear in the state budget in a transparent fashion.”

“There is growing resentment among workers over state money being used to fund the Palestinians or similar causes rather than for infrastructure that would help the Iranian population,” Dr Ottolenghi said. “So the fact that there is profound economic mismanagement, corruption and vast disparities in accounting is neither new nor surprising. What’s significant is that somebody in the political system is using it as a tool to criticize the government.”

Peugeot signs agreement with Iranian Carmaker

AHN — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:56:11 +0000

Iranian auto manufacturer, Khodro, will be allowed to produce the Peugeot 207 series for export following agreement.

Iran Khodro Company, which is the largest carmaker in Iran with almost 65% of the country’s domestic vehicle production, has signed an agreement with the French carmaker Peugeot to produce 5000 cars of its popular small car model, the 207.

Marc Bocque, a spokesperson for Peugeot, confirmed the deal when contacted by The Media Line.

The cars will be exported to 63 different countries globally, mainly Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus and Serbia, as well as Central Asian, Northern African and Gulf countries, according to Khodro.

The deal is not the first time that the two companies have cooperated. The Samand, sometimes referred to as the Iranian national car, is based on Peugeot’s mid size 405 model.

Khodro in addition produces cars under license from the German car-giant Mercedes-Benz and the Japanese Suzuki.

While the Iranian government’s trade tariffs on importing foreign cars into Iran have helped Khodro establish itself as the number one carmaker in the country, reports of inefficiency, a $9 billion debt and risks of bankruptcy abound.

In august, a government backed bailout worth $1 billion, due to have been financed by sale of the central bank’s stock was stopped by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“The problem is that the factory has been weakened financially from having been subsidized for so long by the government,” Emad Honarparvar, CEO of Iran’s Import-Export Business Directory, told The Media Line on the reason for the bailout.

“They have had financial problems for more than three years, but what brought them to the bottle neck, was the world economy slow down,” Honarparvar said.

The large exposure to the domestic market has made the company vulnerable to falling demand among Iranians, as the country is facing declining oil revenues and sustained high levels of inflation.

No new proposals have been made since.

Iran Khodro Company was founded in 1962 under the name Iran National in the capital of Tehran and its first model was the Paykan which was released five years later.

The model was available in five versions according to the company: Standard, Deluxe, Kaarluxe, Javanan (for the youth), and Taxi.

Since the government subsidizes the price of gas, driving has been made a national pleasure and in 2007 the government attempted to impose limits on fuel consumption. Drivers were allowed to buy a maximum of 26 gallons per month but following complaints from drivers the amount was increased to 31 gallons.

Buying fuel above this limit means paying four times more.

Iran To Let Foreign Inspection Of New Nuke Facility

AHN — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:36:15 +0000

Geneva, Switzerland (AHN) – Iran, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany agreed Thursday to continue talks on Iran’s controversial nuclear program and the opening of a new Iranian nuclear facility to international inspection.

The deal was reached in Geneva, Switzerland during landmark talks that involved high-level U.S. representatives. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns represented Washington in the talks held at the isolated Villa Le Saugy, an 18th-century building outside Geneva.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama described the negotiations as a “constructive beginning” but stressed it was too early to rule out economic sanctions against Tehran. If negotiations drag on, Obama said the U.S. can quickly move to imposing sanctions.

Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, described the negotiations as a good basis for future talks.

Also in the talks were European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

American Student Imprisoned In Iran Returns Home

AHN — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:04:19 +0000

Washington, D.C. (AHN) – A Southern California college student who was imprisoned for a short period in Iran has returned to Los Angeles this week, officials said.

Twenty-nine-year-old Esha Momeni was jailed and then banned from leaving Iran for nine months arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday.

Momeni, an Iranian-American, was working on her master’s thesis on women’s rights for a program at California State University Northridge.

“It is wonderful news to learn that Cal State Northridge graduate student Esha Momeni has returned safely to Los Angeles,” Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester said in a statement yesterday.

“All of us in the CSU Northridge community have been looking forward to this day. I have met briefly with Esha, and she appears to be in fine spirits. I know that she is looking forward to resuming her graduate studies in a few days,” he added.

Momeni was charged with acting against national security and was held in solitary confinement for 25 days in Evin prison.

She was released on bail after the sentence. Iranian officials then confiscated her passport and forbade her to leave the country.

Gates: U.S. Offer Of Talks To Iran Only Until September

AHN — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:20:56 +0000

Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) – In Jerusalem for talks on the peace process and Middle East security, Defense Sec. Robert Gates on Monday said the Obama administration is hoping for Iran to respond U.S. offers of diplomacy regarding its nuclear program by September, when the United Nations General Assembly opens.

A nuclear-armed Iran “would be profoundly destabilizing to the entire region and a threat certainly to Israel, the United States and other countries in the region,” Gates said in a press conference after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“The president is fully aware that the Iranians may simply try to run out the clock,” he added. “I think the president is hoping for some kind of response by this fall… achieving long-term security for Israel is ultimately dependent on a sustainable, comprehensive Middle East peace.”

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is also in the region in a separate trip and will meet with Netanyahu on Tuesday.

Iran has received international condemnation for its nuclear proliferation program, which it has said is for non-military purposes.

The United States is part of a group of six nations called the P5+1 that are in talks with Iran about denuclearization. The group includes China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom.

There is concern that Israel, perceiving an existential threat, may decide to act unilaterally and strike at Iran to end the Islamic nation’s nuclear program, a decision Barak did not discount during his talks with Gates.

“Israel retains its position that no option should be taken off the table,” he said. “Of course, at this stage, priority still should be given to diplomacy and international cooperation.”

Iran has received three sets of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program. In February, it announced that it had launched its first locally made satellite into orbit, prompting concerns from Western nations.

The Islamic nation is also facing continued unrest over the results of its June 12 presidential elections. Only its 10th election since the 1979 revolution, massive rallies were held by pro and anti-government protesters in the days after incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Opposiition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had rejected the offer of a recount and called for new elections, citing evidence of “illegal activities” such as the “open involvement of some members of the government…. in favor of the incumbent,” voter intimidation, vote buying and loss of ballots and ballot boxes.

The turmoil has been cited by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in discussing the progress of nuclear talks with Iran towards a September deadline.

“There does not seem to be a capacity within Iran to be able to significantly respond to the offer of engagement that we have made in a number of different frames,” Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley said last week, elaborating Clinton’s statement. “We’ll have to wait and see

where Iran is and at what time they determine that they can kind of give us an indication of what they are either willing to or are able to do.”

“There are other avenues for engagement and potentially for cooperation in the context of Afghanistan and, of course, bilateral. But the ball is clearly in Iran’s court, and obviously, right now, the government has its hands full,” Crowley added.

Clinton is facing questions over her statement last week saying if the United States extends a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East, Iran will not be able to continue intimidating other states.

But the Secretary over the weekend refused to respond to the controversy caused by her remark, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “It’s clear that we’re trying to affect the internal calculus of the Iranian regime. The Iranian Government, which is facing its own challenges of legitimacy from its people, has to know that its pursuit of nuclear weapons, something that our country along with our allies stand strongly against.”

“What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating… we’re not going to let that happen… your pursuit is futile,” she added.

Clinton also expressed assurance that although Israel is free to “act in the furtherance of their survival,” the United States has “a long, durable relationship” with Israel and both nations are working together with other allies to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state.

Senate Approves Funds To Thwart Iranian E-Censorship

AHN — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:59:58 +0000

Washington, DC (AHN) – The Senate unanimously approved an amendment to the National Defense Reauthorization Act aimed at thwarting the Iranian government’s electronic censorship efforts.

A main focus of the bill is to require President Barack Obama to create a report on all non-Iranian companies that have helped the Iranian government censor citizens during the aftermath of the country’s disputed presidential elections.

The amendment, which authorizes about $60 million in spending, is sponsored by Senators John McCain, R-AZ, Joseph Lieberman, ID-CT, Ted Kaufman, D-DE, Linsey Graham, R-SC and Robert Casey, D-PA.

The amendment also calls for the expansion of news read in Farsi by Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda and the Voice of America’s Persian News Network.

Money for the bill could also be used to develop additional transmission capability to counter Iran’s efforts to jam radio, satellite and Internet-based transmissions, according to a press release from McCain’s office.

Protestors In New York Join March To Protest Iran’s Post-Election Violence

AHN — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:45:22 +0000

New York, NY (AHN) – Hundreds of protest rallies against Iran’s internal policies are taking place in cities across the United States and world Saturday.

Marchers in New York were preparing to begin moving toward United Nations headquarters there shortly after 2 p.m. EDT, according to live televised reports being broadcast on CNN.

Some protestors in New York, and elsewhere, reportedly say they want to move Iran toward a democracy in the hope of avoiding a nuclear-armed Iran.

Hundreds of people in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany had demonstrated against Iran earlier Saturday.

Protestors across the U.S. and the globe are calling for an end to the violence and suppression that Iranian government officials have directed at civilians since the June 12 presidential election led to charges of fraud.

(img: Washington Rally from Radsciencegeek)

One of the best pictures out of Iran

Steven Hodson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:55:00 +0000

They say that one picture is worth a thousand words. Well this picture is worth that and a lot more in my opinion.

via Technovia

In Iran the bullets killing Iranian citizens is worth $3,000

Steven Hodson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:40:00 +0000

As the news still continues to come out of Iran the government is trying everything it can, short of pulling the country’s Internet plug, of silencing the people. Part of that silencing unfortunately also includes people being killed. It would seem though that the Iranian forces are deciding that this could be a good time to earn some extra cash. For one Iranian family this blackmail meant having to pay a $3,000 ‘bullet fee’ – the fee charged by the Iranian forces for the bullet used to kill their son – before they could claim their son’s body.

In a post that appears on the Wall Street Journal today Farnaz Fassihi relates the story of the Alipour family and how the elder Mr. Alipour had to plead with morgue officials to have his son’s body return.

Mr. Alipour told officials that his entire possessions wouldn’t amount to $3,000, arguing they should waive the fee because he is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. According to relatives, morgue officials finally agreed, but demanded that the family do no funeral or burial in Tehran. Kaveh Alipour’s body was quietly transported to the city of Rasht, where there is family.

Yup an enlightened society.

Video claims to show Ahmadinejad and clerics planning to eliminate Iranian democracy

Duncan Riley — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:22:23 +0000

A video that claims to show Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Iranian clerics planning to eliminate Iranian democracy has surfaced online.

The video is Farsi, so it’s difficult to be 100% sure of its contents, however Iranian Twitter users claim that it shows Ahmadinejad discussing changing the Islamic republic system in Iran at the moment to a dictatorship.

The following translation via HotAir, and video below. If the translation is accurate, its content could be explosive, and may help Iranian protesters gain further support within Iran itself.

Apparently Mesbah Yazdi has spoken and it is Ahmadinejad’s turn to speak.

He thanks the audience with common Arabic courtesies:

Ahmadinejad humbly requests that special attention be paid to what he is to say which is about staring pure Islamic rule, not only in Iran but all over the world. He said we had a set back because we were not doing our Islamic duty to pressure people be more enlightened with Mohammadan Islam.

Islamic rule should not and cannot be limited only to Iran. Our efforts to expand it throughout the world are soon to be materialized with the help from God.

Struggle against corruption is of course enjoyable, but the ultimate joy will be the time when we realize the final heart-desired aim. We are always at work to realize that ultimate objective. I believe that revolution is beginning to find its way and a renewed evolution is taking place in it.

The revolution was hard and, began with difficulty, and the road ahead is even harder and more difficult. But this difficult road is exactly what to be expected.

There is enormous energy which has started within the country and is serving the country and is expanding, but needs guidance and supervision/management.

All the things that we have planned and talked about, is becoming a reality.

This plan needs strong ideological and operational support from you. The best place to start it is right here and in front of you. Who have the foresight, passion, experience and fortitude to ensure that it takes shape and becomes a reality.

I think timing is right, all necessary arrangements have been made. I seek your support and help. I am almost nobody compared to you in this struggle, in this grand movement. This is a blessing and is the beginning of a grand evolution in the world. I think this can become a reality. And building Iran as an example for others to follow and be a witness to on the road to realize the grand Islam.

It is possible to accomplish this, otherwise I would not be here sitting with you. Tehran is ready; the university is working on implementing it. Everything is taken care of in Tehran; we need your endorsement and approval.

Iran unleashes banhammer on Brits, football players

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:00:46 +0000

As Barack Obama spoke out more harshly against the Iranian government today, officials in Iran booted two British diplomats for what was reported on state TV as “unconventional behavior.”

A spokesperson for British PM Gordon Brown indicated the diplomats had been told to GTFO for “activities incompatible with their diplomatic status.” Not to be outdone, Britain immediately announced that it would be expelling two Iranian diplomats in retaliation.

The banninations didn’t stop there, however, with state-controlled newspapers reporting that four players (Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32) have been “retired” from the sport after wearing green wristbands during a match in Seoul, South Korea, as a show of solidarity for fellow citizens in the post-election turmoil. (Iran drew 1-1 in the match.)

Six players in total sported the defiant wristbands and the professional fate of the other two remained unclear. Upon returning to Tehran, no players were able to retrieve their passports from officials and the wristbands are said to have greatly embarrassed Iranian authorities. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is known to be a fervent footie fan, and in 2006, Iran was banned by FIFA from international competition after being accused of governmental interference in the sport. The ban was later rescinded.

[Image: Reuters]

That picture of Neda everyone is using …. it’s the wrong one

Steven Hodson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:44:19 +0000

Images can become iconic extremely quickly, identifying movements with a visual is a powerful force in our visual world. What happens though when one of those iconic images turns out to be based on a mistake?

In the ongoing civil unrest in Iran no one image has become more iconic than the one of Neda Soltani, the young woman who was shot down in the streets. The big problem is that the image of Neda Soltani that is being flashed around the world may not be the actual picture of the Neda Soltani that was killed. According to Techdirt the picture we are seeing came about as a result of a misunderstanding of how Facebook works.

Basically, a woman named Amy Beam, who was interested in the Neda Soltani in the video contacted other Neda Soltani’s found on Facebook, and one communicated back with her, and eventually they "friended" each other on Facebook. Soon after, the "living" Neda Soltani posted a translation of an article about the killed Neda Soltani on Amy’s Facebook "wall." However, the way this works, is that along with the post on the wall, it includes the poster’s own avatar/profile photo — in this case the living Neda Soltani. From that, others who were friends of Amy saw the name Neda Soltani, the story about the killed woman, and the photo of the living woman — and assumed they were all the same woman… and from there the photo started spreading like wildfire, including websites, TV, banners and elsewhere. And the really scary part is that the living Neda Soltani is now quite afraid for her life, since she’s suddenly become "the face of the face of the struggle in Iran" despite not being the woman who was shot.

This mistaken picture of Neda has been flashed around the world, it is a part of our collective memories of this time in Iran. We even used the picture in one of our posts about the killing of Soltani. I haven’t been able to find a picture of the real Neda Soltani that was killed but as soon as one shows up we’ll let you know.

Iran’s Voice is Heard: Clerics Consider Alternative to ‘Supreme Leader’

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:30:24 +0000

Middle Eastern news site Al Arabiya is reporting that the very foundation of modern Iranian government may be due for a re-write:

Iran’s religious clerics in Qom and members of the Assembly of Experts, headed by Ayatollah [Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, are mulling the formation of an alternative collective leadership to replace that of the supreme leader, sources in Qom told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.

These reports come on the heels of arrests and killings of protesters that most of us have seen splashed across our Twitter and Facebook status feeds, and it is these recent events that are being credited as the impetus of for the re-consideration of Iran’s governmental structure.

Though the death of the iconic Neda and others like her may have played a part, it is likely that the imprisonment of five family members of Rafsanjani may have played a much more directly influencing factor. Rafsanjani is considered, according to Al Arabiya, to be one of Iran’s most powerful man as the head of Assembly of Experts (the group of clerics responsible for the appointment and dismissal of the Supreme Leader) and the head of the Expediency Council (the group that arbitrates disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council).

This is exactly what the movement’s calls for reform now entail. The change of heart by Rafsanjani and the clerics may not have come at a better time, as ABC News reports along with other organizations that the recent rounds of brutality against protestors has demoralized the movements, and rallies have had much lower attendance today in Tehran:

The crackdown on protestors promised Saturday by the Iranian government appears to have worked, with few people on the streets of Tehran today, though there was violence overnight.

But as rallies failed to materialize, a female protestor reached by ABC News by telephone in Tehran complained about the lack of leadership.

Asked whether she is disappointed that the streets were so quiet, the female protestor, who did not give her name, said “yes.”

“Of course it is! It’s really sad. People getting killed, people doing everything in their power to go against the regime after 30 years and we don’t have the support here. We don’t have proper leadership,” she said.

Interview with the YouTube User Behind Neda’s Video [#neda]

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:38:45 +0000

Andy Plesser points to an interesting interview this afternoon that took place with a Holland YouTube user who took the infamous and iconic video of Neda meeting her fate at the hands of the Basij in Iran.

The fellow’s name is Hamed, and he described how he came into possession of the video, and the speed at which it propagated across the web.

Listen!

“I was collecting information on my Yahoo 360 blog, as it wasn’t blocked in Iran. At the same time one of my friends on Facebook wrote ‘My wife just came home, and someone was killed next to her.’ I reported this on my weblog, but as I was not sure, I removed it some minutes later.”

“I called to one of my friends who was at the same location and ask him what was going on over there. He said ‘nothing.’ I said ‘Are you sure?’ He said ‘I will go out and report to you.’ I didn’t get anything from him. I called to one of my other friends in Tehran on his landline, and he answered me and said that friend went to the roof of his home and said there was smoke.”

“Just at this time, another friend a wrote to me a girl is killed next to me right now. He asked me is it possible to publish through you the video that I took next to me right now. I said, ‘absolutely.’ He emailed it to me. I was ready to send it to CNN and BBC. I published it to CNN and sent it two times to BBC. I sent it to YouTube and to Facebook. Five minutes later, it started to get several email and messages, and published everywhere.”

Hamed is protecting the identity of the one who took the movie.

Continued Protest in Iran Signal Shift in Goals [#iranElection]

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:35:56 +0000

As the reality sets in that what’s now being called the New Revolution and the Sea of Green shows no sign of receding, more in depth analysis seems to be coming out. The tail end of last week showed a bit of partisan bickering while both the US left and right seemed to be looking for ways to use this against their political opponents. Interestingly, now it is a site called The Bipartisan Report that looks to throw a little cold water on the exuberance Americans are seeing in the pursuit for Iranian freedom.

Tom Regan writes there:

Come on people. Mousavi is certainly more “liberal” in terms of his opponent (that certainly the way we want to see it in the west), but Obama (the real one) is absolutely correct when he says there will be little difference between the two. We all know why – the president doesn’t get to call all the shots in Iran. Mousavi, a former premier under the mullahs, for heaven’s sake, is a saavy politician and he is probably correct in thinking the election was stolen. But Mousavi is not Iran’s Obama – he is Iran’s John Kerry. He talks a great game, but he’s been part of the political establishment for a long time.

Tom is a former blogger for NPR, and has a long history writing about Iran, but I think it’s his experience here that’s jading the larger picture the rest of us are seeing.

It’s a protest that’s no longer about a re-count, a President, or about hatred for the West and an institutional Jewish Israel.

Following the declaration last week by Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s office that the election had been fixed, Iranian filmmaker and current president of the Asian Film Academy Mohsen Makhmalbaf was named the official spokesman of now jailed presidential candidate. He recently penned an editorial that was printed in the UK Guardian entitled “I speak for Mousavi. And Iran,” which purported to do just as the title dictated:

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neutralize his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he’s a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we’re having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy.

What we’re seeing emerge in Iran is a desire for a new political system, one perhaps less based in theocracy, and one more rooted in democracy. The desire is to have a system less governed by corruption and connection, and rooted in personal freedom. It’s no longer simply about one candidate, one election or one set of reform goals.

Honestly, for most of us, that’s what it was all about in the first place. I had a conversation last night with a politically conservative friend of mine who expressed confusion as to why Americans of all political stripe and without an ounce of dissent are supporting Iranians when they were so divided over whether to support Iraqis and their pursuit for freedom.

I argued, after a bit of thought, that I think the difference here is that the rallying cry didn’t come from someone who was an American partisan of any stripe.

“If a conservative goes to war, he’s an imperialist hawk,” I said. “If a liberal goes to war, he’s a meddling bleeding heart”

“Freedom is only okay depending on how its achieved?” he asked.

“There are easy ways to turn the process of freedom into an argument when it comes from someone with other agendas,” I responded. “When it comes from someone who’s crying out “Let me be free,” it’s hard to argue with that.”

Iran and Social Media – watershed moments in history

Steven Hodson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:53:06 +0000

For anyone following any of the reports coming our of Iran it isn’t very difficult to see that to potential for change is sitting on the cusp. It’s been bloody, it’s been violent and people have been hurt and some have died. Change doesn’t come without a cost but most of the world are only getting an inkling of the cost being incurred by the people of Iran. News organization after organizations have been tossed from the country and those mainstream media reporters and photographers who have managed to stay do so at great risk to their lives.

The only window we have at this point into this watershed moment in Iran’s history is because of those gallant and dedicated journalists and photographers. However they are not alone in the documentation of change. Right at their side, like never before, are the people of Iran. Using tools that didn’t exist when Ayatollah Khomeini took control of the country in 1979 the people are telling the world what is happening in their country.

Iran and its quiet world of social media

I won’t claim to be any more knowledgeable about the politics and inner workings of Iran than the next person – that would be foolish. What I do know is that for some time the Iranian people have long been users of social media tools like Facebook, and now Twitter as well as Friendfeed. It has never been an overtly publicized usage as it is here in the US or other countries around the world. It has been a quiet usage because their government is well known for throwing up blocks to keep them from being able to access the web.

As a result the knowledge of how to get around the government filters is passed quietly among those who want the world to know what is going inside of the country. As Anne-Marie Corley writes at the Technology Review blog [referencing her conversations with Ethan Zuckerman]

Zuckerman attributes the continued information flow in part to "latent capability": savvy Internet users in Iran already know how to circumvent blocking measures, so in a political upheaval they don’t have to relearn the process. "The longer a country censors and the more aggressively it censors," says Zuckerman, "the more incentive it gives citizens to learn how to get around that." Because Iran has been filtering since at least 2004, says Zuckerman, a lot of Iranians already know how to use proxies–computers that route traffic around a government-imposed block. So even if you’re just using a proxy to surf porn, says Zuckerman, suddenly, a political crisis hits and you already have the means to communicate.

However the recent events in the country have raised that previous quiet use of social media into a large worldwide voice that isn’t letting this event fade quietly away under the repressive measure of a government being called into question by its citizenry. In most countries this kind of uproar would be one thing to deal with but it Iran this isn’t just an outcry against a questionably elected government. As of Friday it is also a voice against the religious leaders of the country and that – for Iran – adds a whole different meaning to what is going on.

As CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria said in an interview about what was happening in the country

No, I don’t mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may — I certainly hope it will — but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime.

The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound.

What is going to happen in Iran is anyone’s guess right now. All we do know really is how little we know and how little is making it out of the country. Unlike revolutions before this one though there has never been the concentration of the world on what is happening and that is only possible because of social media. For the people of Iran though this isn’t a story about social media. For them social media is just a tool to be able to tell the story of Iran – their story.

Social Media’s growing voice in the world

While a lot of attention is being showered on Twitter and to a lesser degree the other tools of social media like Facebook and Friendfeed the idea that these tools are something new to the world of social change couldn’t be further from the truth. As Ethan Zuckerman points out in a recent post

I’ve been asking some of the reporters I’ve spoken with where they were on other recent social media and protest stories. Citizen media has emerged as one of the key spaces for journalism in Fiji in the wake of a coup government that’s censoring mainstream media. It’s been a key source of information in Madagascar as that country’s suffered through a violent change of government. (One reporter who I mentioned this to remarked that Madagascar was “just a speck of an island somewhere”. That speck is twice the size of Great Britain and has the population of Australia…) In Guatemala, online media publicized the assasination of a lawyer by forces close to the president… and government authorities began arresting people for twittering the story to amplify it. These weren’t huge stories for most newspapers – the Iran story is huge not because of the social media aspect, but because protests in Iran are a huge story independent of citizen media.

As well Noam Cohen points out in a New York Times post

Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week ….

Where once we might have cracked jokes about all those silly tweets and pointless poking on Facebook suddenly they are providing us with a way to have front row seats to a changing world. Like never before the people directly involved in social change within their country are able to let the outside world know what is going on – with words, pictures and video. As you saw from Paul Short’s post earlier today these tools have the very power to bring a young woman’s death into our homes.

Only iconic pictures of a dead Kent State protester, or the young Vietnamese child running screaming from napalm burns, or the aftermath of Hiroshima carry the same impact. Except this time you can see the life draining from her – you can’t escape it because it is real and you know it. It isn’t state manipulated information or photoshopped cheering crowds around a false victor.

The way we look at our world, or the way we participate in our elections will ever be the same. Social media has changed all that.

The aftermath and responsibility

Just as we have had front row seats to what is happening in Iran we will probably have as well those same seats to see how it ends – good or bad. In the meantime how do we deal with sitting in those front row seats?

In some cases we have seen DDoS attacks against Iranian government sites but at the same time we don’t question is this really the best way to help. As Evgeny Morozov points out in a post at the Foreign Policy net.Effect blog

But these little subtleties get lost on an angry online mob that wants revenge on Ahmadinejad without taking the effort to educate themselves about the repercussions of their cyber-activity. It’s a shame that some American bloggers are participating in this campaign and are even encouraging others to take up their "cyber-arms". Not only is this irresponsible and probably illegal, it also hurts users in Iran and gives their hard-line government another reason to suspect "foreign intervention" – albeit via computer networks – into Iranian politics.

The net effect of this being of course the pulling of the Iranian Internet plug which would then leave us totally blind to what was happening. More importantly though it would also take away the one important way for those Iranians trying to alert the world of what was happening.

Sure it might give you a gratifying sense of doing something for the ‘cause’ but the fact is that many of the so-called anti-Iranian Government actions on the web may actually exasperating the situation. As hard as it might be sometimes the best help you can give people to to do everything in your power to make sure that the only door they have to the world stays open.

I have long maintained that Social Media has the power to be a changing force in our society it all depends on how we use the tools given to us to be a part of that change. Even in the few short weeks since the Twitter Revolution of Maldova the idea that these self-same tools that we play silly games on could be a potential factor in a change of country from both a political and religious perspective is amazing.

As is Iran standing at a cusp of change so is our larger world but we don’t see it yet. While some will definitely laugh at me and suggest the cranky old fart has finally lost it I will stand here and say that Social Media is coming of age. It is too bad that it is taking the look from the dying eyes of a young woman in Iran in a video on YouTube to show us this.

New details, image and video of Neda Iran emerge

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:49:49 +0000

New details, an image and video of slain Iranian protester Neda Iran have found their way online.

According to reports from inside Iran, Neda was a 27 year old philosophy student who was attending the protests with her lecturer and fellow students. The reports claim that she was seemingly shot at random by a member of the Iranian Basij volunteer militia who drove past on a motorbike. The image above is said to show Neda Iran, real name Neda Agha Soltan posing for a identity document.

The new video (below) of Neda shows her before being shot. I think AllahPundit at HotAir put it so well:

I hope to god this isn’t really her…because the thought of her being so beautiful and dignified makes the murder somehow that much more obscene….If there’s any justice, there’ll be videos like this of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad someday soon.

For the original video, see Neda Iran video.

Iran admits voting fraud, stats though show it could be far larger again

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:46:15 +0000

Iran’s Guardian Council has found that the number of votes cast in 50 Iranian cities exceeded the number of people entitled to vote.

Iranian State media reported that the additional votes “could be over 3 million and the council could at the request of the candidates re-count the affected ballot boxes.”

While the claim has been widely reported in Western media as well, far little analysis has been done on the numbers claimed in the report. A crunch of the numbers suggest that the number of fraudulent votes could be much, much higher than 3 million, but let me explain the math.

Voter turnout at the Iranian election was reported to be 85% (ref), a historic high in a country where voting is not compulsory. There are anywhere from 46 million eligible voters according to Iran’s Interior Ministry, to over 51 million according to Iran’s Center for Statistics (ref.)

Now the 3 million votes identified by the Guardian Council are votes cast above 100% of eligible voters, and yet turnout is reported at 85%. See the gap now?

Turnout figures are reported on a country wide average basis, and aren’t available on a city or polling booth basis (least not in English or via an easy to identify source.) We also don’t know which cities or ballot boxes were affected, but we can make some estimates.

An additional 3 million votes would mean that an additional 6.5% of votes were cast on top of the 100% mark based on the Interior Ministry number of 46 million eligible voters. If turnout was the average 85% in the effected cities, that would mean that up to an additional 6.9 million fraudulent votes may have been cast on top of the 3 million figure, bringing the total to 9.9 million votes.

Now the bad news is that 9.9 million doesn’t allow for the gap between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, which was 11.3 million votes, but there could be more.

The 85% turn out figure is strange on a couple of fronts. Yes, there’s obviously a mood for change in Iran, but there’s some irregularities as well. The figure was first reported by Iran to be 70% (ref) until it was revised up to 85%. Both figures are historic highs as well, with voter turnout at the last round of voting in Iran in 2005 hitting only 48% (ref). 85% isn’t impossible, but could the additional 15% above 70% have been added to cover up even more widespread voting fraud?

If the actual turnout was 70%, the figures shift around, and presuming all fraudulent votes went to Ahmadinejad, Mousavi comes out at around 4 million votes ahead, and that of course would be game over.

Other sites are claiming that the Iranian Government simply made the figures up (and there’s some decent arguments in favor of that theory), but what if they didn’t just make the numbers up, but tried to cover themselves by stuffing the ballot box with physical votes for Ahmadinejad, after all, if you can show physcial votes, it’s easier to defend against claims of fraud. But what if they didn’t get it right, and over stuffed the ballot boxes, resulting in the 3 million votes they’ve admitted to today? Given the situation in Iran, it’s not impossible that this scenario may have taken place.

Update: a thought: we’re taking turnout figures as being accurate, but we can’t back those up, and if the election was rigged, so to could have been the reported turnout figures. We know turnout was high in Tehran due to the media coverage, but what if the real figure Iran wide wasn’t even 70%? What if it was something closer to 50 or 60%? the bigger the gap between actual turnout and reported turnout becomes, the bigger the fraud. It’s not inconcievable that in at least some Iranian cities, actual turnout could even have been below 50%.